Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Forum administrators, Interface administrators, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
116,442
edits
Competition Coupon Madness: Difference between revisions
→Real Life: copyedit, added another example
m (Mass update links) |
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) (→Real Life: copyedit, added another example) |
||
| (6 intermediate revisions by 3 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|Our lieutenant is the up-and-coming type.
Played with soldiers as a boy you just can bet.
It is written in the stars
He will get his captain's bars,
But he hasn't got enough box tops yet.|'''[[Tom Lehrer]]''', "It Makes a Fellow Proud to Be a Soldier"}}
Line 33:
== Literature ==
* [[Robert Heinlein]]'s ''[[Have Space
* In the Dorothy Sayers novel ''[[Lord Peter Wimsey|Murder Must Advertise]]'', Lord Peter Wimsey comes up with a marketing campaign based on this scheme while working undercover in an advertising agency.
Line 52:
== Video Games ==
* In ''[[Ace Attorney Investigations]]'', Colias Palaeno, the Ambassador of Babahl, keeps handing out coupons in order to drum up
{{quote|
'''Edgeworth:''' Ah...thank you, I shouldn't need any more.
'''Palaeno:''' Oh...in that case, let me make it up to you with some coupons!
'''Edgeworth:''' I-I have plenty of those, too! ''(Where is he conjuring them up from?!)'' }}
== Western Animation ==
* Just a throw-in joke and not a story line, but here's an obligatory ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|Simpsons]]'' example:
{{quote|
'''Milhouse:''' Thanks, it cost me 50,000 Bazooka Joe comics! }}
* In "Girl of Steal" from ''[[My Life as a Teenage Robot]]'', the [[Cool Toy]] is the Musique. Tucker wants one so badly that he steals box tops from everybody in the neighborhood then brings them to the Musique store and has a fit when the store manager tells him he has to send the box tops in and wait for the Musique to arrive in the mail.
Line 70:
* On ''[[Rocky and Bullwinkle]]'', Boris and Natasha produce counterfeit box tops to get all the prizes and undermine the world's economy. [[General Mills]] (which not only sponsored the show, but owned it outright) was not amused and forced the producers to [[Aborted Arc|end the story earlier than planned]].
** The drama in that arc is that Bullwinkle had an impossible number of ''legit'' box tops because he 'couldn't decide what to get.'
* ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants]]'' had our titular character devouring 100 boxes of Kelpo Krunch practically all at one sitting, all in order to get the box tops needed to send in for a free toy. He then realizes he didn't necessarily have to eat ''all'' the cereal in the aforementioned boxes.
* In ''[[Hey Arnold!]]'', Arnold and Gerald need to collect 50 cereal box coupons to earn a children's telescope so they can see an upcoming passing comet. Since they collected half of the coupons, they invite their friends and neighbors for the remaining cereal.
== Real Life ==
Line 77:
* Burma-Shave once offered a mock promotion that promised a trip to Mars for anyone who collected 900 empty jars. When Arlyss French, a grocery store owner, managed to actually collect them, Burma-Shave responded, "If a trip to Mars you earn/Remember, friend, there's no return." After French collected another 900 jars for the return trip, they decided to go ahead and send him to [[wikipedia:Moers|Moers, Germany]].
* They still have these. [http://www.labelsforeducation.com/ Labels for Education], Coke Points/Pepsi Points, Camel Cash... A variation is/was [[wikipedia:Green stamps|"Green Stamps"]], which you could earn in several different places and then redeem for stuff.
* Similarly, Marlboro cigarettes had such a promotion all the way up through [[The Nineties]], which offered Marlboro-branded gear and clothing in exchange for tops from its cigarette packs. It was discontinued after accusations arose that it was intended at least in part as a stealth campaign to encourage teen smoking.
* In 1999, California engineer [[wikipedia:David Phillips (entrepreneur)|David Phillips]] did the math and found that a particular promotion, in which a food company offered airline frequent flyer miles in exchange for inexpensive food purchases, was a phenomenally good value. For about $3000, he was able to buy enough pudding to redeem for over a million airline
** This story was used for the movie ''[[Punch
* Up until 2012, [[w:Bazooka (chewing gum)|Bazooka brand bubble gum]] included small comic strips with each piece of individually-wrapped gum which also had premium offers on them, as seen [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bazooka_Joe#/media/File:Bazooka_Joe.gif on this sample]. Typically each premium could be acquired for several hundred comics, or for a small fee plus a token number of comics.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Comedy Tropes]]
[[Category:
| |||